Women have never played a bigger role in the Navy. They fuel and fly
fighter jets, stand watch on the bridges of warships, and build bombs. They also have babies.

Reconciling those roles is a challenge for Navy brass. During wartime, sailors must be ready to deploy at a moment's notice -- something
pregnant women can't do and single parents can't do easily.

Compounding the issue is a rise in the number of single mothers in uniform and concern about unplanned pregnancies among enlisted
sailors.

The Navy's most recent survey found 14 percent of all women in the Navy were single mothers in 2005, up from 11 percent in 2003 and 7 percent in
2001. Fourteen percent isn't unprecedented -- similar statistics were found in 1989 and 1999 -- but military officials say they don't know the
reason for the recent increase.

The Pregnancy and Parenthood survey also found that almost two-thirds of enlisted women who became pregnant in the previous year had not planned
to do so.

That's higher than the overall U.S. unintended pregnancy rate of 49 percent -- and well above the Department of Defense's target rate of
30 percent.

The biennial survey is being updated this year, with results expected in 2008.

Whether expectant moms are single or married, pregnancy poses thorny issues for the Navy. There are more than 50,000 women in the Navy -- about 15
percent of the total force -- and most are in their prime childbearing years. The most recent survey found 38 percent of women in the Navy are mothers.
Forty-seven percent of Navy men are fathers.

This summer, the Navy changed its pregnancy policy, allowing new mothers a full year of shore duty after giving birth. Previously, sailors who had
babies got a four-month reprieve from ship deployments or assignments in war zones.

"How we handle family issues will continue to be a major factor in whether many individuals decide to stay in the Navy," Vice Adm. John C.
Harvey Jr. said in a news release announcing the change, which took effect in July. "We need to make sure we are doing what is in the best interest of
the individual, the family and the Navy."

Until 1975, women expecting babies had to leave the military. That year, pregnant sailors were given the option of staying in uniform. But because far
fewer women served in what were considered "critical" jobs, it was easier for the Navy to absorb the loss if they left.

Now, with women almost completely integrated -- only submarines and commando units are off-limits -- the Navy can't afford to lose them.
Today, the Navy allows pregnant women to leave before their enlistment is up only if they demonstrate "overriding and compelling factors of personal
need."

Women in job fields that are understaffed, and those who extend their enlistment for schooling or training, don't qualify.

According to Mike McLellan, a spokesman for Naval Personnel Command, 107 pregnant women were allowed to leave the Navy before their commitments ended in
2006. In 2005, 96 women did so.

Instead, Navy officials try to manage pregnancies. They encourage women to plan their pregnancies to coincide with shore duty tours, not while
they're on sea duty and assigned to ships for a set period of time. When women on sea duty become pregnant, they are transferred by their 20th week.
Weight and physical fitness requirements are eased for a time, and new mothers get 40 days of leave after giving birth.

Nevertheless, women assigned to ships do get pregnant, though at a slightly lesser rate than those on shore duty. When pregnant sailors are reassigned,
shipmates must shoulder their workload until a replacement arrives, often months later. Inevitably, sailors grumble about women getting pregnant to avoid
deploying.

Lt. Stephanie Miller , chief of women's policy for the chief of personnel, acknowledges "there probably are women who do do it
intentionally."

When she hears "rumors and speculation" to that effect, Miller said, she informs sailors that far more men don't deploy -- or get sent
home midway through a cruise -- because of sports injuries, discipline issues or testing positive for drugs.

"Generally when I show the data, they're like, 'Oh, wow, I didn't really know that,'" Miller said. She also pointed out that
women who become pregnant while on sea duty don't get a permanent reprieve: They are sent back to a ship when their "post partum operational
deferment" ends.

Besides encouraging sailors to use birth control and plan their pregnancies, there isn't much the service can do to reduce pregnancy in the
ranks.

A Navy training video, "Give Yourself a Chance," tackles the issue.

"Parenthood, whether planned or not, will have a huge effect on your career," a female actor in a sailor uniform says in the 23 -minute video.
"For a woman in the Navy, getting pregnant while assigned to sea duty disrupts her qualification process," making it harder to study for tests
required to advance.

The narrator emphasizes: "The fleet isn't a 9-to-5, commute-to-work, everyday kind of job. It's a military force, and all Marines and
sailors must be ready to deploy with their unit anywhere, at any time. Your unit works as a team with each member as a vital part. If you can't deploy,
everyone is let down."

In addition to emphasizing the importance of condoms, birth control pills and other methods of contraception, the Navy also makes available emergency
contraceptive pills for use within 72 hours of unprotected sex. The pills are available at every Navy medical clinic and hospital.

A 2005 report from the Navy Environmental Health Center noted that 64 percent of all enlisted female sailors who became pregnant in 2005 did not plan to
do so, up from 55 percent in 1992. As part of its Healthy People 2010 objective, the Department of Defense wants to reduce the percentage of unplanned
pregnancies among service members to 30 percent.

Navy officials don't track how many women get pregnant or give birth each year, but they do collect monthly statistics on how many enlisted women on
sea duty are pregnant. An analysis of those statistics since 2000 shows the figure is usually in the 10 to 12 percent range. In May, for example, 1,881 of
the 16,942 women assigned to ships -- 11.1 percent -- were pregnant.

Last summer , while stationed on an aircraft carrier gearing up for deployment, Brown, 29 , learned she was pregnant with her second child.

"At first I thought they'd be like, 'Brown got pregnant because she didn't want to go on cruise,'" said the information
systems technician. Sydney, now 3 years old, was born while Brown was assigned to a shore-based staff command in New Orleans.

A few people groused, Brown said, but most of her shipmates on the Eisenhower were supportive when she transferred to a shore job at Little Creek Naval
Amphibious Base.

Brown and her partner -- he's also a sailor -- welcomed their second daughter, India , in January . In June, four months after returning to work,
Brown went back on sea duty.

Though she just missed out on qualifying for 12 months of post partum shore duty, Brown considers herself lucky. She's now stationed on the
amphibious assault ship Bataan , which is under repair at a local shipyard -- meaning no extended deployments for the time being.

If she had to deploy now, leaving the girls in their father's care, "my heart would drop," Brown said. "I don't think they are
ready for me to leave yet."

But Brown is steeling herself for the inevitable.

"They will get a cruise out of me," she said. "I'm on a mission. ... I want to finish my sea duty, and finish it in full. Mentally,
I'm just trying to prepare myself now. I know my family will be well taken care of."

In an all-volunteer, fully integrated military, dealing with pregnancy is a necessity. But the large numbers of single female parents are something of a
mystery to Navy officials.

Single moms with custody of their children aren't entering the service that way: Navy policy prohibits custodial single parents from enlisting. The
number of single mothers in the Navy has grown from an estimated 3,900 in 2001 to 6,800 in 2005. The percentage of men in the Navy who were single fathers
in 2005 was 6 percent, up from 3 percent in 2001 and 2003. Because the Navy is predominantly male, there are more single dads in the Navy than there are
single moms -- about 15,600 in 2005.

Shelley MacDermid , a sociology professor at Purdue University and director of its Military Family Research Institute , said she isn't sure why the
number of single moms in the Navy has grown . But she has a few theories:

Military women may be less interested in marriage than their civilian peers. Or maybe the women have had a hard time maintaining marriages if husbands
can't deal with solo parenting duties during deployments.

And perhaps the military is attractive to sailors who become single parents because it offers comprehensive health insurance, subsidized day care and
retirement.

"If you have an all-volunteer labor force with a very demanding job, the only way you're going to get people to join and stay with you is by
offering something they want," MacDermid said. "People want to have families and want to have a high quality of life."

Petty Officer 2nd Class Nichole White , a single mother with seven years in uniform, is determined to make a career of the Navy.

She couldn't do it without the help of her mother in Baltimore, who watched daughter Janaya for a total of a year while White deployed, first on the
destroyer Bulkeley and then, a few months later, on the destroyer Mason .

When the Mason returned to Norfolk in May after almost eight months overseas, 17-month-old Janaya didn't recognize her mother. White, an operations
specialist , was too overjoyed to care.

"The hardest part is leaving your child behind," White said. "Once you're gone for a while, you still think about your child, but you
focus on the mission."

All single parents, and dual-military couples with kids, are required to file a detailed "family care plan" that specifies who will care for
children during deployments.

According to the Navy's surveys, about two-thirds of single, enlisted mothers have parents or other relatives to care for a child when they go to
sea. More than 70 percent of the time, single fathers depend on their children's mother.

The Navy has a much harder time retaining female surface warfare officers, those who specialize in operating ships at sea: The overall retention rate is
17 percent for women, compared with 35 percent for men.

When Rear Adm. Mike Lefever worked as head of surface officer distribution, he found out that men responded well to monetary bonuses -- a $5,000 bonus
increased male retention by 1 percent. But women weren't as influenced by money, said Lefever, now head of manpower plans for the chief of naval
personnel.

Formal and informal surveys of young surface warfare officers between 1999 and 2006 showed their biggest dissatisfaction was inability to plan personal
time because of job requirements. The surveys also noted that women's prime childbearing years -- ages 25 to 37 -- directly overlap with the most
intense years of an officer's career progression.

The improvements that surface warfare officers indicated they wanted -- a more manageable workload, work/life balance and a less rigid career path --
are keys to retaining qualified men and women across the Navy, Lefever said.

Family-friendly ideas under consideration or in practice aren't limited to women. They include telecommuting, flexible work hours and transfer into
the reserves for up to three years -- with benefits -- so sailors could study, travel, start a family or care for an ailing relative.

"This is very important, being able to balance life/work for our sailors and the new generation," Lefever said.

Petty Officer 1st Class Kemi Pavlocak is an example of the kind of sailor the Navy wants to keep around.

Pavlocak is a construction electrician with the Seabees -- a career field that's overwhelmingly male, and one the Navy is trying to get more women
to enter. She has already done two six-month tours in Iraq.

"It was life-changing," Pavlocak said.

Her life changed again in April, when she gave birth to daughter Zizi .

Pavlocak said she's deployed with women who had to leave months-old babies behind. The yearlong exemption from deployments puts her mind at ease,
she said, but juggling motherhood and the Navy has been a challenge.

"You leave this job, and you go home and you start another one," said Pavlocak, whose husband takes care of Zizi during the day. "I think
this might be my last child."

It won't be her last stint in the Navy. Pavlocak learned this week she was accepted into the Navy's Seaman-to-Admiral program, through which
she'll earn a degree in electrical engineering and be commissioned as an officer.

Judith Vendrzyk , a former Navy officer now finishing her doctorate in sociology at the University of Illinois , supports the Navy's attention to
family matters. But, she said, it's in the Navy's own self-interest.

"As much as I'd like to say it's out of the goodness of their heart, I think it's pure, cold reality," Vendrzyk said. "...
The bottom line is you're sinking a lot of money into these people, officer and enlisted. We're putting so much money into health care and bonuses
and all these things.

"If we don't retain them, that's just another way we're bleeding money."

Has the USN also considered adding some sex education classes to basic training? You put healthy, young men and women into close proximity, consensual* sex
will happen. There are highly reliable methods of making pregnancy extremely rare. They should be readily available, with no questions asked, to members of the
services.

-----------------

* Non-consensual sex, i.e., rape, is a very serious discipline problem. A servicewoman pregnant because of a rape is the victim of a crime; perhaps
the services should consider suing, in civil court, the rapist for the productivity loss due to his (usually, his) criminal act. I don't think this will
deter anybody, but that's mostly because I think most criminals are too stupid to be deterred.

emc wrote:
Has the USN also considered adding some sex education classes to basic training? You put healthy, young men and women into close proximity, consensual* sex
will happen. There are highly reliable methods of making pregnancy extremely rare. They should be readily available, with no questions asked, to members of
the services.

There is some birth control training in boot camp and there is some command level training and birth control is readily available (medical hands
out condoms for free and females have free access to birth control). This is a policy issue as well as a command issue, a pregnant female isn't replaced
and often does not go back to the ship leaving a "gapped" billet for up to several years and the chain of command does not have many tools to punish
those who break the rules and engage in fraternization. For example a pregnant single female does not have to reveal who the father is, and the military
cannot legally do DNA testing to determine who the father is to punish him and make them pay child support.

bgile wrote:
The USN is beginning to initiate disciplinary measures to women who get pregnant on deployment.

There have been some recent fraternization problems where CO's have been fired as a result.

I think having females on submarines is a really stupid idea. Surface ships are bad enough.

The surface ships are not "bad enough". I've served on both an all male Burke and a mixed crew and for the most part both were
about the same, both had the same amount of drama and stupidity just different types. Females will do just fine on subs.

bgile wrote:
The USN is beginning to initiate disciplinary measures to women who get pregnant on deployment.

There have been some recent fraternization problems where CO's have been fired as a result.

I think having females on submarines is a really stupid idea. Surface ships are bad enough.

The surface ships are not "bad enough". I've served on both an all male Burke and a mixed crew and for the most part both were
about the same, both had the same amount of drama and stupidity just different types. Females will do just fine on subs.

From your previous comments, it appears to me that you have lived a sheltered life. Perhaps you served on unusual commands. My experience with SSNs, for
example, is that there very few faithful husbands in overseas ports and you have implied that just doesn't happen very much. A different navy perhaps.
You don't seem to think that sex with crewmembers occurs and everyone somehow becomes sexless while at sea and there is no jealousy between people who
don't get it and those relative few who do. I suspect you are deeply religious and don't frequent bars, etc. I think we see two different versions of
human nature. So be it ... we have differing view of world reality and I'm reasonably sure our views are not reconcilable. It doesn't really matter
because female equality in all respects (except they get special PT standards) has become politically correct and for better or worse your desired outcome will
apparently become the norm and we will all see the eventual result in readiness. I hope you are correct, but I'm afraid you aren't.

bgile wrote:
The USN is beginning to initiate disciplinary measures to women who get pregnant on deployment.

There have been some recent fraternization problems where CO's have been fired as a result.

I think having females on submarines is a really stupid idea. Surface ships are bad enough.

The surface ships are not "bad enough". I've served on both an all male Burke and a mixed crew and for the most part both were
about the same, both had the same amount of drama and stupidity just different types. Females will do just fine on subs.

From your previous comments, it appears to me that you have lived a sheltered life. Perhaps you served on unusual commands. My experience with SSNs, for
example, is that there very few faithful husbands in overseas ports and you have implied that just doesn't happen very much. A different navy perhaps.
You don't seem to think that sex with crewmembers occurs and everyone somehow becomes sexless while at sea and there is no jealousy between people who
don't get it and those relative few who do. I suspect you are deeply religious and don't frequent bars, etc. I think we see two different versions of
human nature. So be it ... we have differing view of world reality and I'm reasonably sure our views are not reconcilable. It doesn't really matter
because female equality in all respects (except they get special PT standards) has become politically correct and for better or worse your desired outcome
will apparently become the norm and we will all see the eventual result in readiness. I hope you are correct, but I'm afraid you aren't.

Easy now Mr. Troll. All because someone has a different experience than you doesn't make them sheltered. I'm not going around insulting
you so back off.

I have never been sheltered, I am not religious and yes I went to the bars, strip clubs and houses of ill-repute while on deployment. Yes I knew of what went
on in the fan rooms and human nature will assert itself. If those activities result in a pregnant female sailor then she and her fan-room +!!% buddy should be
punished married or not. At no time have I EVER said married sailors are faithful, I have never said that. Females on ships and subs is here and won't
change in the next few decades, get over it.

Women have been serving regularly aboard US Navy ships since 1978.
(Disregarding WAVES, etc. which happened even further back) The expansion to combatants from them serving only on auxiliaries happened I believe in 92 or 93.
So it's been 18-30+ years, depending on how you count it, for any significant discipline problems to crop up.

In fact, every ship I served on during my time (89-06) was 'co-ed', and there were no unusual discipline problems that I encountered, no jealously or
whatever. 99% percent of the crew just did their jobs so we could all get home without having to swim there. Of course I can't make a direct comparison to
an all-male command since I never served at one. Yes some women got pregnant, (trust me nobody was more pissed off about female sailors having
'accidents' before a deployment than the other women, particularly the career ones) and some sailors, both married and single, got caught 'doing
it' on board from time to time. Those situations were handled appropriately (usually CO's mast) as any other discipline issue. The majority of married
sailors in my experience (myself included) didn't cheat, or if they did they were sly enough about it to keep it off the 'Mess Deck Report'.
(figure the odds of that)

As has been discussed in the thread about women on subs there are other issues with that aspect, particularly on SSNs (hot racking, etc).

I don't have any experience at all with female shipmates. I do know how horny we all got by the end of a two month SPECOP and what happened when we pulled
into a foreign port. I just tried to put sex out of my mind while at sea, but I think having women in front of me day after day would have made that more
difficult and harder to concentrate on my work. In a submarine the only things you have to look at are your shipmates and your work. You guys seem to think it
isn't a problem and maybe it isn't. Maybe if you can manage to think of them as just another shipmate, separate quarters aren't even necessary.
Maybe young sailors are different today; I dunno. If you don't need to provide separate quarters, that makes the whole thing simpler.